Diabetes 2
Diabetes 2Diabetes
Some people have a disease that requires them to take daily injections of insulin. This disease is called diabetes, and cannot be cured. But, what if a non functioning pancreatic islet cells could be made to produce insulin once again. That would cure diabetes. The possibility has set the diabetes world excited over the past few months--ever since researchers at McGill University in Canada and the Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS) successfully regenerated islet cells in diabetic hamsters. The researchers used a mixture of proteins called Ilotropin to "turn on" nonfunctional islet cells. The treatment also caused new islet cells to grow where there had been few or none. Since then, in a report in the May 1997 Journal of Clinical Investigations, the researchers have identified the gene that Ilotropin triggers, the one involved in regenerating the islet cells. If the human version of the same gene could be turned on in similar fashion, type I insulin dependent diabetics and type II's who inject insulin might have their natural insulin-producing apparatus restored.
What is Diabetes? Well, this disease is known as "diabetes mellitus," diabetes from the Greek word meaning excessive urination, a symptom the Greeks noticed, and mellitus, from the Latin for honey, which is because diabetic urine is filled with sugar and is sweet. Physicians and medical books use the term diabetes mellitus, but is the most commonly called diabetes. There are two major types of diabetes: type 1 and type 2. Both of them are a little different. But everyone with diabetes has one thing in common: Little or no ability to move sugar--or glucose--out of their blood into their cells, where it is the body's primary fuel. Everyone has glucose in their blood, whether or not they have diabetes. This glucose comes from food. When we eat, the digestive process breaks down carbohydrates into glucose, which is absorbed into the blood in the small intestine.
To get insulin into the blood, do you have to inject it with a needle? Yes, but hopefully not for too much longer. Two new studies show that an experimental...
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